Proverbschapter 2
22 verses · Solomon and others · 10th to 5th century BC · Wisdom and poetry
if you seek it like silver and search it out like hidden treasure,
Introduction
Solomon and others, Wisdom and poetry, Proverbs Overview.
This chapter comes from the same father's school that opens Proverbs, and the book's heading gives it to Solomon. Its first hearers were sons old enough to travel alone and to be approached by strangers. It is built as one long conditional sentence, with a set of demands followed by the results that come from meeting them. Listen for the pictures taken from mining and from choosing a road in hill country. Notice also who, in the end, gives the wisdom the son has been told to search for. Read it as the chapter that explains why the rest of the book is worth the effort.
Context
- Who
- A son old enough to travel alone and to be approached by strangers
- What
- A father's lesson that sets out what a son must do to find wisdom and what wisdom will do for him once he has it.
- Where
- Jerusalem, in a father's instruction that draws its pictures from the mines and the country roads of Israel and its neighbours.
- When
- The reign of Solomon, about 970 to 931 BC, by the heading at Proverbs 1:1; the book reached its final form later, since Proverbs 25:1 names the men of Hezekiah as copyists.
- Why
- To teach that wisdom must be sought with effort, that the LORD is the one who gives it, and that it guards a young man from evil men and from the adulteress.
Historical context
"Search for her as for hid treasures" is a mining picture. Ancient silver and copper were dug out of shafts and galleries, the copper works in the Arabah south of the Dead Sea still show the tunnels and slag heaps, and the labour was brutal: crawling, hauling baskets, breathing dust for a seam that might run out. The point is the cost, not the romance.
Show the rest of the historical context, 2 more paragraphs
The travel language is just as physical. There were almost no paved roads. A journey meant choosing among worn tracks over ridges and through wadis, and a wrong turn at dusk could put a man among thieves or in a dry ravine at nightfall. "Path," "way," and "track" in this chapter are the vocabulary of a man who has actually been lost.
The "strange woman" here means a woman outside the covenant of her own marriage, the wife of another man. The chapter says she "forgetteth the covenant of her God," which points at the marriage contract sworn before God, not at foreign birth. In a village where everyone knew everyone, adultery was a matter of clan honour and blood, and the Law made it a capital offence for both parties.
Significance
For the first hearers, wisdom was not a mood that arrived. It was mined. You cried after it, you dug, you gave up sleep for it, and then, the chapter says, God gave it, which is the surprise at the centre.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The promised payoff is protection on a road with real bandits and real seductions. Young Israelites listening were being told that the discipline of learning was not schoolroom decoration; it was the thing that would keep them alive and out of court.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
No part of this chapter is read in the synagogue year. The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot total 0 and haftarah uses total 0 for Proverbs, and no festival reading.
The chapter is met in study through Midrash Mishlei, which the corpus cites here at 2:1, 2:4, 2:5, 2:6 and 2:7. The one weekly portion its locators name is Vayeshev, through Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayeshev 37 under the twenty-first verse.
How it is read
Rashi is the commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. He reads the chapter as a promise about the Torah. The ear turned to wisdom means to toil in learning Torah (Rashi on Proverbs 2:2:1). Wisdom is great because it came from the mouth of God, "Therefore, you must acquire it" (Rashi on Proverbs 2:6:1). On the wisdom stored up for the upright he gives its history in one line. "The Holy One, blessed be He, hid it [wisdom] with Him for twenty-six generations until He gave it to the generation of the desert" (Rashi on Proverbs 2:7:1).
The strange woman of the sixteenth verse carries his longest note, and it is an argument. He reads her as the assembly of idolatry, which is sectarianism. A reading that sees only an adulteress is too small, he says, because the praise of the Torah would then be that it saves from one sin alone. "Rather, this is the casting off of the yoke of all the commandments" (Rashi on Proverbs 2:16:1). Those who do not return from her house are those for whom it is hard to part with it and to repent (Rashi on Proverbs 2:19:1). The upright who dwell in the land dwell there "In the world to come" (Rashi on Proverbs 2:21:1).
One note shows a reader that Rashi's own text has come down in more than one form. On the man who speaks perversity, the corpus prints the reading of the Lublin and Waxman editions, and then two others. The Malbim edition speaks of one who distorts the words of the Torah after his erroneous view. The Vilna and Warsaw editions speak of apostates who distort the words of the Torah to evil (Rashi on Proverbs 2:12:1). The translation keeps all three side by side.
The corpus carries ten further notes on this chapter without an English text, each marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. Five stand cited and unquoted at Ibn Ezra on Proverbs 2:1:1, 2:9:1, 2:10:1, 2:14:1 and 2:17:1. Four stand at Metzudat David on Proverbs 2:2:1, 2:3:1, 2:4:1 and 2:13:1, and one at Malbim on Proverbs 2:22:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited here rather than quoted. On the first verse it holds Devarim Rabbah 7:9, Midrash Aggadah, Numbers 33:1:2 and Midrash Mishlei 2:1. On the third it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 10:4, Berakhot 57a:4 and Midrash Mishlei 23:2. On the fourth it holds Midrash Lekach Tov at Deuteronomy 11:22:1 and Leviticus 13:37:1, with Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 11:22:1. On the fifth it holds Avot DeRabbi Natan 4:1 and Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 4:4:5.
The strange woman draws the tractate on idolatry. On the eleventh verse the corpus holds Avodah Zarah 17b:2, on the nineteenth Avodah Zarah 17a:8 with Avot DeRabbi Natan 2:7, and on the twenty-fourth Avodah Zarah 18b:14 and 18b:15. On the sixteenth it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 13:16, and on the eighteenth Bamidbar Rabbah 9:12 and 10:2.
The good way carries the rest. On the ninth verse it holds Yoma 38b:14, on the twentieth Bava Metzia 83a:10 with Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Bava Metzia 6:1, and on the twenty-first Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Bava Batra 1:14. On the twenty-second it holds Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 885:1 and 885:3. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Proverbs 2:1:1 to 2:21:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Proverbs 2:1:1, 2:9:1, 2:10:1, 2:14:1 and 2:17:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on Proverbs 2:2:1, 2:3:1, 2:4:1 and 2:13:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Malbim, Malbim on Proverbs 2:22:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/proverbs/2.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, printing no portion, no Haftarah and no festival reading for this book.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Search for Her as for Hid Treasure
Proverbs 2:1-4
My son, if you accept my words: In the Hebrew the whole chapter is one long conditional sentence, a single sweep from if to then. The line “if you seek it like silver and search it out like hidden treasure” borrows from mining, the digging that fills Job 28's picture.
Proverbs 2:1
Wisdom is open to all and loves humankind. Anyway, Solomon says, "My son, if you accept my words of instruction and keep them deep within you, your ear will listen to wisdom." This means that the word is sown and kept deep in the soul of the learner as if in the ground. This is spiritual growth.So he adds, "You shall direct your heart to understanding and direct it towards instruction for your son."
Clement of Alexandria · written before 215 · The Stromata Book 1patristic
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Proverbs 2:1
Now in the divine order comes the promise Pro 2:5. The conditions of its fulfillment are stated in Pro 2:1-4 in four sets of parallel clauses, each with some shade of distinct meaning. Thus, not “receiving” only, but “hiding” or treasuring up - not the “ear” only, but the “heart” - not the mere “cry,” but the eager “lifting up the voice.”
incline your ear to wisdom: Albert Barnes reads verses 1 to 4 as four pairs of conditions, each going further than the one before, from the ear to the heart. To incline your ear is to lean toward the one who speaks. Wisdom and understanding must enter the heart.
lift your voice to understanding: The search now becomes a loud cry, the voice lifted as for something lost. Clement of Alexandria quotes this verse to teach that God gives wisdom in many forms, from skill of hand to prophecy. Verse 6 names the One who answers the call.
Proverbs 2:3
God's wisdom … [works] "in many forms and many ways" through technical skill, scientific knowledge, faith, prophecy; it shows us its power to our benefit, because "all wisdom comes from the Lord and is with him to all eternity," as the wisdom of Jesus puts it. "For if you call for practical wisdom and perception at the top of your voice, if you seek it as you would a treasure of silver, and if you track it down ardently, then you will realize the meaning of reverence for God and you will grasp the perception of God."
Clement of Alexandria · written before 215 · The Stromata Book 1patristic
search it out like hidden treasure: Hidden treasure was often buried in a field, as in the parable Jesus told at Matthew 13:44. Adam Clarke urges the reader to seek the salvation of the soul as hard as the covetous seek silver. The search costs labor.
Proverbs 2:4
“If thou seekest her as silver - How do men seek money? What will they not do to get rich? Reader, seek the salvation of thy soul as earnestly as the covetous man seeks wealth; and be ashamed of thyself, if thou be less in earnest after the true riches than he is after perishing wealth. Hid treasures - The original word signifies property of any kind concealed in the earth, in caves or such like; and may also mean treasures, such as the precious metals or precious stones, which are presumptively known to exist in such and such mines.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Proverbs 2:5-6
then you will discern the fear of the LORD: The line “then you will discern the fear of the LORD” answers the conditions. The fear of the LORD is here the reward of a diligent search. “For the LORD gives wisdom” grounds the search in a giver, and the seeking is answered “from His mouth,” from outside the seeker.
Proverbs 2:5
“Solomon says, "You will find a divine sense." For he knew that there were in us two kinds of senses, the one being mortal, corruptible and human, and the other immortal and intellectual, which here he calls "divine." By this divine sense, therefore, not of the eyes but of a pure heart, that is, the mind, God can be seen by those who are worthy.”
Origen of Alexandria · written before 253 · On First Principles 1:1.9patristic
from His mouth come knowledge and understanding: The LORD gives wisdom as a gift, and knowledge comes from His own mouth. Bede reads the verse of the eternal Wisdom, like the Wisdom of Sirach 24:3 who comes from the mouth of the Most High. James 1:5 promises wisdom to all who ask.
Proverbs 2:7-9
He stores up sound wisdom for the upright: “He stores up sound wisdom for the upright” pictures wisdom as treasure kept for its owners. “He is a shield to those who walk with integrity” makes protection wisdom's first office. The guarding of “the paths of justice” rests on God's action as well as the vigilance of the wise.
Proverbs 2:7
“Sound wisdom - “Soundness,” an idea which passes on into that of health and safety. Compare “sound doctrine” in 1Ti 1:10; 2Ti 4:3.”
protect the way of His saints: The word for saints is chasidim, the faithful who keep covenant love with God. Albert Barnes notes that the same title was later claimed by the devout party of the Maccabean years, called Asideans at 1 Maccabees 7:13. The LORD guards their way.
Proverbs 2:8
“Path of judgment - Righteous paths, judgment being here put for righteousness.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
This is the chapter's second then. Verse 5 promised the knowledge of God. This verse promises the three aims of 1:3, which Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read as every part of duty to God and to man.
Proverbs 2:9
“Then--emphatic, in such a case. righteousness . . . path--all parts of duty to God and man. Idea of Pr 2:9, amplified; on terms, compare Pr 2:2 and Pr 2:4.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Wisdom Delivers From the Evil Man and the Strange Woman
Proverbs 2:10-11
For wisdom will enter your heart: “For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will delight your soul” marks the turn from instruction heard to wisdom possessed. “Discretion will watch over you, and understanding will guard you” names the two guards. The chapter is built on deliverance, two dangers named and two rescues promised.
Proverbs 2:10
“Another picture of the results of living in the fear of the Lord. Not that to which it leads a man, but that from which it saves him, is brought into view. Notice also that it is one thing for wisdom to find entrance into the soul, another to be welcomed as a “pleasant” guest.”
Discretion will watch over you: Discretion translates mezimmah, a word that can mean a wicked scheme and here means a good plan. Adam Clarke notes that Coverdale rendered it counsel, a mind that devises good. At 12:2 the same word marks the man of wicked schemes.
Proverbs 2:11
“Discretion shall preserve thee - מזמה mezimmah. See on Pro 1:4 (note). Here the word is taken in a good sense, a good device. The man invents purposes of good; and all his schemes, plans, and devices, have for their object God’s glory and the good of man: he deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things he shall stand. Coverdale translates, “Then shall Counsel preserve thee.” A very good translation, much better than the present.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Proverbs 2:12-15
to deliver you from the way of evil: The words “to deliver you from the way of evil” name the first of the chapter's two deliverances, a man defined first by his speech. His company leave “the straight paths to walk in the ways of darkness,” men who knew the right paths and left them on purpose.
Proverbs 2:12
“The man that speaketh froward things - תהפכות tahpuchoth, things of subverston; from תפך taphach, to turn or change the course of a thing. Men who wish to subvert the state of things, whether civil or religious; who are seditious themselves, and wish to make others so. These speak much of liberty and oppression, deal greatly in broad assertions, and endeavor especially to corrupt the minds of youth.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
the ways of darkness: The straight paths lie in the light, and the men of verse 12 leave them for darkness. Bede sets the verse beside John 3:20, where everyone who does evil hates the light. Darkness hides the deed.
rejoice in the twistedness of evil: Those who enjoy doing evil have moved from doing it to delighting in it. Gregory the Dialogist sets the verse beside Jesus weeping over the city, and teaches that Christ still mourns for those who rejoice in evil. Romans 1:32 gives the same charge.
Proverbs 2:14
“For seeing the city, he wept over it, saying: If you had known, even you. This he did once, when he announced that the city would perish. This our Redeemer never ceases to do daily through his elect, when he considers that certain people have passed from a good life to wicked ways. For he mourns those who do not know why they are mourned, because, according to the words of Solomon: They rejoice when they have done evil and exult in the worst things.”
Gregory the Dialogist · written before 604 · 40 Homilies on the Gospels, Homily 39patristic
whose paths are crooked: Crooked and devious describe paths that twist away from the straight paths of verse 13. Cyril of Alexandria sets the verse against the call of Luke 3:4-5 to make straight paths, where every crooked way is made straight. The twist is in the walker.
Proverbs 2:15
What is the meaning of "Prepare the way of the Lord"? Make ready for the reception of whatever Christ may wish to enact; withdraw your hearts from the shadow of the law; cease from the types; think no more perversely.… "Make the paths of our God straight." For every path that leads unto good is straight and smooth and easy; but the other is crooked that leads down to wickedness those who walk therein. For of such it is written, "Whose paths are crooked, and the tracks of their wheels awry."
Cyril of Alexandria · written before 444 · Commentary on Luke, Homily 6patristic
Proverbs 2:16-19
It will rescue you from the forbidden woman: “It will rescue you from the forbidden woman” opens the second deliverance. She “forgets the covenant of her God,” so her danger lies in broken covenant as well as broken marriage. Her house “sinks down to death,” and the warning is absolute: “None who go to her return”.
Proverbs 2:16
“The stranger which flattereth with her words - החליקה hechelikah, she that smooths with her words. The original intimates the glib, oily speeches of a prostitute. The English lick is supposed to be derived from the original word.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Proverbs 2:16
“To deliver thee from the strange woman,.... As the Gospel of Christ and its doctrines, or the instructions of wisdom, are a means of delivering persons from the evil man, his company, ways, and works; so from a naughty woman, an adulteress, called a "strange" woman; not because of another nation, or unknown, but because she belongs to another person, and not to him whom she entices into her embraces.”
the partner of her youth: is her husband, the friend she married when young. Albert Barnes reads the covenant of her God as the marriage vow made before God, the covenant Malachi 2:14 says the LORD witnessed. Adultery breaks faith with both.
Proverbs 2:17
“The guide of her youth - Better, the familiar friend (compare Pro 16:28; Pro 17:9). The “friend” is, of course, the husband, or the man to whom the strange woman first belonged as a recognized concubine. Compare Jer 3:4 The covenant of her God - The sin of the adulteress is not against man only but against the Law of God, against His covenant. The words point to some religious formula of espousals. Compare Mal 2:14.”
her tracks to the departed spirits: The departed spirits translates rephaim, the shades of the dead. Adam Clarke pictures her house set off the high road, so that every step toward it is a step toward death. Her door opens downward.
Proverbs 2:18
“For her house inclineth unto death - It is generally in by and secret places that such women establish themselves. They go out of the high road to get a residence; and every step that is taken towards their house is a step towards death. The path of sin is the path of ruin: the path of duty is the way of safety. For her paths incline unto the dead, רפאים repheim, the inhabitants of the invisible world.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
None who go to her return: Those who go to her lose the paths of life. Bede reads her as death, and holds that a man joined to an adulteress may still return by repenting, with the help of the Lord.
Proverbs 2:20-22
So you will follow in the ways of the good: “So you will follow in the ways of the good” gives the conditional sentence its purpose, a life spent on “the paths of the righteous”. The promise that “the upright will inhabit the land, and the blameless will remain in it” echoes the land promise of the law.
Proverbs 2:20
“It will be our wisdom to walk in that way, to ask for the good old way and walk therein, Jer. vi. And we must not only walk in that way awhile, but we must keep it, keep in it, and never turn aside out of it: The paths of the righteous are the paths of life, which all that are wise, having taken hold of, will keep their hold of.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Proverbs 2:20
Scripture itself plainly testifies to this very thing, saying: "For if they would walk in right paths, they would certainly have found the paths of righteousness smooth."
John Cassian · written before 435 · Conference of Abbot Abraham, Chapter 24patristic
the upright will inhabit the land: Albert Barnes hears in the verse the Hebrew love of home, where to inhabit the land was the highest good for the whole people. The blameless remain in it while the unfaithful of verse 22 are uprooted from it. Psalm 37:11 gives the land to the meek.
Proverbs 2:21
“Noticeable here is the Hebrew love of home and love of country. To “dwell in the land” is (compare Exo 20:12; Lev 25:18, etc.) the highest blessing for the whole people and for individual men. contrast with it is the life of the sinner cut off from the land (not “earth”) of his fathers.”
the unfaithful will be uprooted: The unfaithful are bogedim, from a root that Adam Clarke links with the word for a garment, men who cover themselves with a false character. Uprooted pictures a tree torn out of the ground. The land keeps the upright of verse 21 and casts out the wicked.
Proverbs 2:22
“Transgressors - בוגדים bogedim. The garment men, the hypocrites; those who act borrowed characters, who go under a eloak; dissemblers. All such shall be rooted out of the land; they shall not be blessed with posterity. In general it is so: and were it not so, one evil offspring succeeding another, adding their own to their predecessors’ vices, the earth would become so exceedingly corrupt that a second flood, or a fire, would be necessary to purge it.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Proverbs 2:22
“They think to take root in it, but they and their families shall be rooted out of it, in judgment to them, but in mercy to the earth. There is a day coming which shall leave them neither root nor branch, Mal. iv.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Keep studying
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Bede, Commentary on Proverbs; Charles Bridges, An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs; Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata Book 1; Cyril of Alexandria, COMMENTARY ON LUKE, HOMILY 6; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon; Gregory the Dialogist, 40 Homilies on the Gospels, Homily 39; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.